


Shades

by Maria_and_Aguilars_Codex_1492



Category: Violet Evergarden (Anime)
Genre: Character Study, Child Soldiers, Developing Relationships, F/M, Implied/Referenced Character Death, the rating may change
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-04-15
Updated: 2018-04-17
Packaged: 2019-04-23 10:29:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,199
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14330520
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Maria_and_Aguilars_Codex_1492/pseuds/Maria_and_Aguilars_Codex_1492
Summary: Violet connects the words of others memories, she connects her own, and through the different shades of colour she lives again.





	1. Chapter 1: Viridescent

_To reach new areas, you have to get your brain out of its comfort zone. There are various ways to do it, but I believe the easiest is by training yourself in a neurological phenomenon called synesthesia, in which the brain makes unusual associations between things like sounds, colors and emotions._

_~Berit Broggard~_

* * *

* * *

 There was something secure--something safe--in the life that she was going to be living.

* * *

* * *

When she had awoken she hadn’t dared to look outside. It was an unfamiliar feeling that caused her to not do so, but as the days slipped by she overlooked it. The training of a soldier overcoming whatever it was that had wanted to keep what was on the over side from view.

 

That first time that she had looked outside of the windows, the first colour that she saw, had been viridescent. The trees and grass stretching on endlessly around the area. Standing out starkly in her vision as she placed her bandaged hand against the glass.

 

The colour was one that she began to associate with the outside world. With the plants and trees. With the few books stacked upon bookshelves. With the colour of her skirt and the curtains on the walls of her new home. It was suppose to mean safety according to what she had read at the time.

 

_It was the colour of his eyes. Tears forming in them as he tells her to escape, to be free, to live happily as others do._

 

And if that singular word matched that of the Majors then it was easy to accept it.

* * *

* * *

As time passes working at the CH Postal Company, Violet begins associating the colour with the emotions that she writes as a Doll: growth, harmony, safety. Although Leon told her of the other emotions that are seen beneath that same colour: greed, _jealousy._ Violet doesn’t understand how such opposites can be seen in the same way. She doesn’t understand how these emotions can be so stark and contradistinctive in comparison to each other.

 

She doesn’t place the memories of his eyes or the hue of her brooch against words of jealousy, vanity, and hubris.

 

Violet simply doesn’t understand the difference at first, no amount of explanation from Claudia or Leon can change that, until she begins to remember what had come before.

 

She remembers the viridescent of their uniforms, the clips on their guns, the vehicles rolling behind them. The trees that they would pass, contrasting against the ones outside of her new home, as her steps fell into line. The way that there would be remains of viridescent covering twigs that had fallen into the trenches. Destroyed and dulled by boots and time.

 

As a child soldier, as a weapon, things had been ordered, and the world was to be ignored. The emotions that others around her suppressed were to be ignored. Perhaps that was what made the colors dull then. Perhaps that was what made them stand out now that she looked upon her own memories.

 

Perhaps, this was a testament to how she was doing as she had been ordered by her Major during their final moment together. Or maybe it was to mean nothing at all. A word, a colour, connecting different meanings and tones, yet never amalgamating together in the whole of things.

 

“Violet?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm just now starting Violet Evergarden, but I couldn't help myself by simply not writing something for it. I promise that the coming chapters will be much longer, so bare with me guys while I attempt to do this character study for her. I hope to be able to use colors to express Violet's innermost thoughts and emotions that come from her own memories. Request are going to remain open for this as well as other works. Feel free to drop those into the comments or my tumblr while I continue the beautiful journey that is this anime.


	2. Vermilion

Violet remembers brief flashes of emotion--longing, willpower, and rage.

* * *

* * *

 

The emotions are her own in the little that she recalls. There is a deep feeling that consumed her as her feet sank into the mud of the ground. At first it had only been people that were nothing more than ghost in her mind that she yearned for. Then the thirst, the hunger, the drive to see something other than the desolate lands surrounding her became the aching urge to continue. Stepping over the mutilated and rotting corpses that blocked her way all for the sake of what she would later learn to be called willpower.

 

That was what kept her alive as the bullets shot past her. That was what Dietfried saw in her as their eyes met through rain, mud, and gunshots. 

 

That was what pushed her to save Gilbert...and what had drove him to save her long before she could live.

It’s that willpower, that longing, that kept her alive. As a doll, as a soldier, and as whatever had come before it. 

 

Though there was more to it than that. There was rage. An emotion she saw long before it shown within the eyes of those she typed for. An emotion that becomes clear when she remembers Dietfried or Gilbert both shooting down the enemy. It is what she barely recalls--a feeling that is lost within the wind--towards herself when she couldn’t save her Major.

 

Was it normal for humans to have such feelings towards themselves? Did emotions go beyond those conveyed towards others? 

 

Violet wishes that she knew; the answer was as tenebrous as it was clear.

 

Though perhaps she needed to look beyond from what was shown. To remember more of herself in times when she had not known what to feel at all.

* * *

* * *

 

_ There were details that seemed to become more comprehensible the longer that they remain in the trench. The dark clouds never clear, but it is not because of the bad weather that assaults them with water from the skies. There are also soldiers who are unlike her, yet they still perform the same duties. It is an incongruity that scratched against her thoughts when the sound of bullets hitting and the screams dying upon gunfire become overwhelmingly close. The Major doesn’t seemed bothered by it though, so she keeps it to herself. _

 

_ The thought doesn’t return until much later. _

 

_ The Major does little to shield her as a boy falls into the trench. There is a wound far too close to his heart, with another showing where the bullet snapped his helmet, grazing his scalp. It is a common sight, yet at the same time she has never seen a fellow soldier as close to her in age slowly die.  _

 

_ She has never seen another Major react in the same manner as the boys does.  _

 

_ The older man is frantic, desperately attempting to stop the bleeding, speaking to the boy in a tone that she has never heard before.  _

_ Later that night, when the boy is disposed of, Violet ask her own Major, as the soldier’s cries fall over the night.  _

 

_ “They are not the same as I. They act differently.” _

 

_ “In what way, Violet?” _

 

_ “Today, when he died, the other soldier didn’t react like the rest. He still is that way even after the boy stopped breathing.” _

 

_ The Major turned then, slowly, passive almost, but his eyes were the opposite. There was something there that she didn’t understand.  _

 

_ “Sometimes we feel something for someone, however inane it may be to do so. We feel it and we continue to do so even if rejection, death, or even fate takes it from us.” The Major’s lip pulled upwards, faint, before it went away.  _

 

_ “I hope you will someday understand. Just--rest for now, Violet. We have to move further tomorrow.” _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Honestly, I don't know how to feel about this chapter, and I probably influenced it too much personally. It's also not as long as originally intended, but my eyes are straining as I type this.


End file.
